


Lot 37

by Liethe



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil is Human, D/s, Dominant carlos, M/M, Submissive Cecil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 17:06:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2199957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liethe/pseuds/Liethe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We never do find out who won Lot 37 at the Sheriff's Secret Police Auction. Here's one idea for what might have happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lot 37

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sofie_vivianna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sofie_vivianna/gifts).



“Carlos?” Cecil looked up in surprise as the scientist sat beside him on the couch. He hadn't heard him come in. Cecil had given him a key, of course, months ago now, but this was the first time he'd used it. “Oh, Carlos! What kind coincidence of fate brought you here, and tonight of all nights? You have no idea the kind of day I've had.”

“Oh,” Carlos replied “I think I have an idea.”

“You listened to my show?” Despite his worries about the auction, and the as-yet-unknown identity of the winner of Lot 37, Cecil found that a shy smile was creeping onto his face. He knew that he was good at what he did, and he truly did believe that his voice on the radio was a valuable part of their little town, but Carlos was a _scientist._ He did _science,_ and there was nothing more important than that. The idea that Carlos would interrupt his very important experiments and take the time to listen to Cecil's show... it made Cecil feel wonderful, as though he could do anything; enter the forbidden dog park, or look a hooded figure in the eye – if hooded figures did, in fact, have eyes - or possibly even stop fretting about the mysterious new owner of Lot 37.

“I always listen to your show, Cecil. _Always_.” Cecil looked down, flushed with joy and embarassment. Even after all this time, it was still gloriously discomfiting to know that Carlos cared for him. After a moment, he felt cool, calloused fingers under his chin, lifting his head. 

“Look at me,” Carlos said, his gentle voice undercut by just the faintest commanding note of steel. Cecil looked up, gazing into Carlos's deep brown eyes. 

“Are you worrying about the auction?” Carlos held Cecil's gaze as he spoke, his voice soft and firm all at the same time. Cecil nodded.

“Don't.”

Cecil opened his mouth to speak, but Carlos pressed a finger to his lips, silencing him.

“Don't,” he said again, and his eyes held Cecil's, until Cecil's eyes started to water, and he didn't know whether it was from trying not to blink, or trying not to cry. When eventually he couldn't help but blink, a tear escaped to make its way down his cheek. Carlos removed his finger from Cecil's still-parted lips, and caught the tear. He held his hand out, and Cecil's tongue inched from between his lips, lapping up the tear. He tasted salt, and sorrow, and hope and despair.

Carlos lifted his other hand to twine his fingers through Cecil's hair. He tugged, gently, and then not so gently, until Cecil lay down with his head in Carlos's lap. He stroked Cecil's hair as he spoke. 

“I listened to your show.” He said. “I know that you didn't get Lot 37.”

“I feel so stupid...” Cecil began, but Carlos shushed him again, the sibilants washing over him like a wave. 

“Do you want to know a secret?” Cecil nodded, the motion pressing his head more firmly into the safety of Carlos's lap.

“No one did.”

“What?” Cecil tried to sit up in surprise, but Carlos pushed him back down, stroking his hair until he relaxed again. 

“When I heard about the auction, I knew I had to do something, so I filled in a form 347-B and lit it on fire, before dousing the flames with the tears of a desert fox.”

“A desert fox?” Cecil replied, focusing on the minutiae to give himself more time to truly comprehend what Carlos was telling him. “Isn't it supposed to be a bald eagle?”

“Desert foxes are for urgent, high priority cases; I researched the process very carefully. I am a scientist, you know.”

“But what is a 347-B? I've never even heard of it.”

“A 347 is a Request for the Reinstitution of Ownership of Contraband and Seized Property. The 'B' indicates that the claim is made on the basis of prior ownership.”

“And?” Cecil asked, anxiously. He didn't try to sit up again, but Carlos could feel the tension in his body.

“The Sheriff's Secret Police approved my request. Look,” he reached awkwardly into his pocket, and then held his hand out, palm flat, in front of Cecil, so that he could see the four crushed violets which the Sheriff's Secret Police had left on his doorstep earlier that day.

“So Lot 37 didn't go up for auction after all?” Carlos shook his head. “I'm free? No one owns Lot 37?” 

“Actually, someone does, just not a bidder at the auction. All the 347-B does is return the item to its rightful owner, once provenence has been adequately established.”

“Its rightful owner? So... that's me, right? Lot 37 belongs to me?”

“No... not exactly.”

“What?”

“The Sheriff's Secret Police left the violets on _my_ doorstep, Cecil. Apparently their assessment of the situation is that Lot 37 rightfully belongs to me.” He looked down, assessing the whirl of emotions crossing Cecil's face.

“Are they right?” He asked, quietly. He thought he knew. He was so very close to sure, but a scientist knows that all theories must be thoroughly tested. Cecil said nothing, but his face was a picture of naked wanting, and he leaned into each stroke of Carlos's fingers through his hair. Still, Carlos needed something more quantifiable than a glance, or an inclination of the head. 

“Tell me,” he whispered. “I need to hear you say it.” Cecil's lips parted, but he said nothing. It affected Carlos immeasurably, seeing his beautiful Cecil so bereft of words, more naked, more vulnerable, than he ever could be without his clothes, or his skin, or his flesh. No skeleton could possibly be as bare as Cecil was in that moment. No mystic reading the future in carefully splayed entrails could possibly uncover any secret as wonderful as the one which was plain in every line of Cecil's body, coiled beside him and over him on the couch. 

Carlos shook his head, to dismiss the thoughts. He'd been in Night Vale too long; he was even starting to think like a local.

“Say it,” he urged again.

“I can't,” the words emerged, barely audible, with none of the molasses-smooth timbre Carlos was so accustomed to hearing in Cecil's voice. At last, Carlos took Cecil's hand, which had snuck onto his knee while they'd been talking. He turned it over, slowly, and spread the fingers. One by one, he placed the four crushed violets – even more bedraggled after their time in his pocket – into Cecil's hand, closing the fingers over them. 

“I don't care what the Sheriff's Secret Police say.” Carlos said, “Lot 37 is yours, and yours alone, unless _you_ decide otherwise. I'll fill out the transfer of ownership forms in the morning. I still have some fox tears left in my lab.” 

Cecil sat up, and Carlos didn't try to stop him. He let his breath out in a heavy sigh; the preliminary results had seemed so promising. Had it been nothing but anomalous data? Was his theory to be disproved so very quickly? He had planned such beautiful experiments to test every possible permutation of the phenomena he'd been so sure he'd observed. Such  _beautiful_ experiments.

But Cecil didn't leave. He got to his knees in front of Carlos and scattered the four violets on the floor at his feet. 

“Lot 37 is yours.” He said, finally managing to force the words out from between unusually clumsy lips. “I'm yours.”

They kissed then, and the approving howl of the federally mandated intimacy supervisor stationed outside their window echoed around them. Carlos didn't even flinch at the sound. No matter how strange Night Vale was, and no matter how many laws of physics it flagrantly defied, he knew now that this was where he belonged, with Cecil. 

_His_ Cecil. 

 


End file.
